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December 2015
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 Graduation, undoubtedly, is the largest annual event that takes place at The UWI St. Augustine Campus. Large, not just for the number of persons both involved in the ceremonies, but also in terms of its reach. The reach of our graduation ceremonies spans not only the graduating class, but also includes their friends, family, alumni and other well-wishers. Given The UWI’s place as a regional institution, it’s safe to say the average person is somehow connected to at least one person in each graduating class.
Social media has expanded the reach even further with networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. For a time like graduation, they are the places for sharing stories and special moments for the graduating class and for their loved ones through photos, videos and extending congratulatory notes through special posts; for alumni, they take to social networking sites to share their fond memories and reestablish connections with the graduating class by sharing their own photo memories of their graduating ceremony.
The St. Augustine Campus took a very targeted approach to leveraging social media for the 2015 ceremonies. We looked at emerging trends in social media in higher education, particularly when it comes to graduation, looking at best practices set by universities across the US and the UK and combining some of these strategies with our own. One strategy included using data in our storytelling – outlining the facts and figures associated with the graduating class and connecting this data to dynamic photos of our graduates at the ceremonies. The result of our targeted effort was the highest recorded levels of engagement on our main social pages – Facebook and Twitter, in terms of the traction for the content that we shared over the three days. High engagement said we were doing something right.
At the time of writing, the organic reach of our posts on Facebook during the 2015 Graduation period (from October 22 to 24) reached a high of 64,435 Facebook users. Post reach quantifies the number of people who have seen a post from our page in their Facebook Newsfeed. Facebook engagement rate is measured in interactions. On a Facebook Page that translates into likes, comments and shares of your posts. Similarly on Twitter, over the 3-day period, our Tweets earned 50.9K impressions. Twitter impressions are described as the delivery of a post or Tweet to a Twitter user’s stream and twitter engagement is measured when a user Retweets, favorites, expands, clicks on, replies to, or follows you from a posted Tweet from your account.
You can never tell just how your following will interact with content. Online, people are bolder and more impassioned with their opinions. It was interesting for us to see how our following identified with photos, videos and stories over the three days. Their comments and overall interactions were a huge part of making some of these moments stand out – particularly for our Graduation Ceremonies, which have followed the same format for most of the 55 years of our existence as a campus, it was really important for us to capture those memorable moments for our online following.
Engagement By Numbers over the 3-Day Period
Twitter
@UWI_StAugustine
50.9K Impressions Overall
Number of times @UWI_StAugustine Tweets or posts appeared in a Twitter user’s stream
17K Daily Impressions over the 3-day period
Number of times @UWI_StAugustine Tweets or posts appeared in a Twitter user’s stream per day
154 Link Clicks
Clicks on web links shared in Tweets
368 Retweets
Number of Tweets reposted or forwarded by users
468 Likes
Number of times users like a Tweet posted by @UWI_StAugustine
30 Replies/ Mentions
A mention or reply is a Tweet that contains another user's @username anywhere in the body of the Tweet. Twitter collects these messages in a user’s Notifications tab.
86 New Followers
Number of new follows to the @UWI_StAugustine account
Facebook
UWI St. Augustine
50,562 Average Reach Per Day
The number of people who have seen a post from UWI St. Augustine in their Facebook Newsfeed.
15,890 Likes
Number of likes by users generated from posts by UWI St. Augustine
1,278 Comments
Number of comments by users on posts by UWI St. Augustine
710 Shares
Number of times a UWI St. Augustine post was shared by users
243 New Fans of the Facebook Page
Number of new fans of the UWI St. Augustine page
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